Solar heating program in Alberta

[Badger]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/03/31/canada.solar.reut/index.html

The money spent on this works out to about $106k (cdn) per house. I guess prototypes are expensive.

Not much detail about the actual process, but I know there are a few companies around that offer a kind of heat pump where tubing is layed in the ground, and is used as a heat sink in summer (cooling) and a source in winter (heating). The pump that runs the system, and the fans that run the cooling/heating system are usually electric. I priced one of these systems out for my place and it is in the $30k (cdn) range.

I wonder if they're using solar cells to run a charging/power system to operate the pump and fans throughout the year, as I know these would be up there on the ole cost scale.

So maybe $106k (cdn) per house isn't far out of range for this kind of operation.

The questions are:

"Who has an extra $75k (cdn) [cost of environmentally friendly system above minus cost of regular heating/cooling system] to spend on their house?"

"Who is going to make this cash outlay to save about $3k/yr in heating/electricity costs?" What I mean is that paying one's heating and electricity bills would be more economically covered by leveraging the $$ involved in the above system as financial investments instead.

 

[DavidJames]

"Who is going to make this cash outlay to save about $3k/yr in heating/electricity costs?" What I mean is that paying one's heating and electricity bills would be more economically covered by leveraging the $$ involved in the above system as financial investments instead.

Not everyone makes decisions based purely on the financial payback. I bought a hybrid car. We knew it would be more expensive to purchase and the payback was tenuous depending on gas prices and longevity of the car. We bought it anyway because we felt buying a car which consumed less gas was the right thing to do.

 

[ma1ic3]

With a hybrid car, you probably don't save more than $250 a year.

 

[Badger]

Re: Re: Solar heating program in Alberta

Not everyone makes decisions based purely on the financial payback. I bought a hybrid car. We knew it would be more expensive to purchase and the payback was tenuous depending on gas prices and longevity of the car. We bought it anyway because we felt buying a car which consumed less gas was the right thing to do.

I hear what you're saying.

Not to denigrate your choice, and I'm sure many others have made the same decision for the same reasons, but the price of your car is significantly less than the price of this heating system.

What I'm saying is that if one needs to buy a car, one can find it easier to justify an extra $10k or so for a hybrid, but if one is in the housing market, coming up with an extra $100k is a bit more daunting.

At least in my opinion.

 

[KelvinG]

Is Ralph Klein aware of this community's plan? That old drunk might have a thing or two to say about a town in his oil rich province trying out some crazy new solar energy wackiness.

Actually, I'm not sure what his position would be but I like the idea of a red-nosed, tipsy Klein calling the townspeople granola eating hippies.